12:47 p.m. - 2005-08-08
something about something
This weekend Kia decided to get me out of the house for a while and we walked to a nearby streetfair, with the band stages and the little tents where you can buy food and the various children's activities and the heat, MY GOD THE HEAT! Why, WHY must they hold out-of-doors events in August? Why schedule anything in August? The whole month is good for nothing except malaise, urban rioting and baseball games.
So anyway, we were looking to have a little lunch and we walked along the block or so of food booths, saw a couple people we knew, listened to some band soundchecks. Kia stopped at a falafel booth representing some unfamiliar, non-local restaurant. On the counter where you order there were big piles of "9-11 was a big hoax" books, phamplets and buttons. Upon noticing these, I resolved not to order a falafel. Mind you, it's not that I don't have lots of common ground with those who declaim the current white house as a pack of lying, money hungry thugs (although slightly less ground when they print a bunch of spooky, through-the-looking-glass treatises where NOTHING IS AS IT APPEARS). It's just that there's no way for me to believe that conspiracy theorists or their adherents can cook worth a shit. Their minds are always far away, combing over the minutiae of an account of a CIA meeting in 1974, not on how much garlic they should be using.
So I left Kia waiting in line at the falafel tent and headed toward the jerk tent. After acquiring my (DELICIOUS!) jerk, I went back to where Kia was still waiting in line, the falafelists having given her order to someone else by mistake. Eventually she was served and we huddled in a small strip of shade. Kia said her falafel was passable, and we ate while listening to a local band, the highs and lows of their mix cranked way too high. At one point Kia gestured toward something and half of the contents of her sandwich spilled out onto my pants, besotting me with rancid yogurt and chick-pea. To me this was an unconscious acknowledgement that 1: her falafel DID suck because conspiracy theorists CAN'T cook, and 2: she was jealous of my toothsome jerk choice. When you're married nine years, there's a lot of heated communication that occurs just below the surface, invisible to passerby.
Days later, our marriage remains intact. We both learned a lot about ourselves and the world we live in, lessons we'll carry well into the next street fair.
COMING SOON: Yet more fucking summer.
